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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Barney Bentall has miles in his legs, music in his soul

There’s no bicycle visible in this photo, but singer-songwriter Barney Bentall is an avid cyclist who will ride in the RBC GranFondo Whistler.

For Barney Bentall, singing and cycling have a purity about them that is as clean and simple as the air on his ranch in B.C.’s caribou country.

Now 57, the troubadour and member of Vancouver’s prominent Bentall family discovered the magic of both at roughly the same time, about 30 years ago, and has stuck with them ever since. He has miles in his legs and music in his soul.

Not that he had any choice — at least when it came to music.

“I don’t know if you choose music or if it’s more a case of music choosing you,” he said during a recent interview. “It is really a calling. It is a voice inside your head that you can’t really shut off.”

Like two rivers that keep joining, there is a recurring confluence of cycling and music in Bentall’s life.

His songwriting partner, Gary Fraser, with whom he has been friends since they were both five, got him into cycling. Now Fraser is a lawyer and Bentall is a professional singer and rancher but they still cycle together.

Bentall has done the 1,200-kilometre GranFondo Whistler twice with Blue Rodeo singer Jim Cuddy and will do it for a third time with him this fall.

If it’s like the last two rides, it will be spectacular. The day began with the national anthem before thousands of cyclists as far as the eye could see along Georgia Street in Vancouver. Then came the ride, an endless stream of humanity flowing up the Sea to Sky.

When writing songs, Bentall will either ride his bike or go for a hike every day.

Cycling aficionados sometimes use the expression “going no chain.” It refers to the feeling that you are flying, riding effortlessly, with no chain. Bentall loves that expression. “When those times happen, your head is clear and everything seems possible.”

He can’t believe how much cycling has exploded in popularity. When he started mountain biking in the late 1970s, it was a fringe sport. “There were a handful of us and we’d meet every Sunday morning and go up to the North Shore mountains.”

Years ago, when he began, cyclists were generally treated with derision or outright hostility. He is happy to see that has changed.

Other things have changed, too. When he first began performing on stage, he used the moniker Brandon Wolf to avoid continual questions about his relationship to the venerable Bentall clan.

Now he’s accepted that the Bentall name is part of who he is.

He tells the story of how his entrepreneurial grandfather, Charles Bentall, came to Vancouver from England penniless in 1905. He went on to design some of Vancouver’s iconic structures — such as the dome of what is now the Vancouver Art Gallery and the 17-storey Sun Tower, once the British Empire’s tallest building.

“As a kid, I would sit at his knee and listen to stories constantly,” said Bentall. “I found him such a fascinating man, definitely a man of integrity. He was always very good to me.”

Along with cycling and music, he has an innate love of building, perhaps a gift from his grandfather. Sometimes up on the ranch, he gets so involved in doing repairs or building that he has a hard time pulling himself in for dinner. In this work, too, he finds purity.

Every year, he and his wife, Kath, cycle from Vancouver to their ranch. It takes them about three days. They take just a few belongings, stop in motels, eat good breakfasts and about as much food as they want. “And the beer is just spectacular after you have been riding six or seven hours.” In fact, just about anything is spectacular. Even a glass of water.

Barney Bentall pedals through life, hopping on and off music stages, rolling up to his ranch in the caribou.